It hasn’t been the best of weeks for trainer Ron Ellis, who Saturday watched 2-5 favorite Rail Trip fall victim to a questionable ride in the Hollywood Gold Cup and then, less than 48 hours later, lost the 5-year-old gelding to East Coast trainer Rick Dutrow.

Mace Siegel, who operates Jay Em Ess Stable with his daughter Samantha, decided after the race to ship Rail Trip east and get him acclimated to dirt surfaces before the Breeders’ Cup Classic on Nov. 6 at Churchill Downs.

Ellis’ plan was to continue to train the horse at Hollywood Park, ship to Del Mar for the $1 million Pacific Classic on Aug. 28, then test him on dirt in the weeks leading up to the Breeders’ Cup.

The scenario mapped out by Ellis was wiped clean during a phone call he never expected.

“Mace called me on Monday afternoon and said, `We’re moving the horse and I’ll pick him up on Wednesday.’ That was it,” Ellis said Thursday.

Ellis wasn’t surprised.

“Shocked would be a better word,” he said.

A winner of eight of 12 lifetime starts with three seconds and a third, Rail Trip is one of the top older male horses in the country. He surpassed the $1 million mark in earnings with his runner-up effort behind Awesome Gem in the Gold Cup, but he’s now heading to a new barn while Ellis scratches his head and wonders why.

“It’s certainly not very common that you’re doing well with one of the best horses in the country and they move him,” the 50-year-old Arcadia resident said. “It’s a big blow, really. Those kind of horses don’t come along very often. I thought we were doing pretty well with him. I didn’t ride him the other day, so it’s hard for me to understand.”

Rafael Bejarano, one of the best jockeys on the planet, rode Rail Trip in the Gold Cup and took a lot of heat afterward for having the horse four-wide and in the middle of the pack through painfully slow fractions of 25.82, 50.95 and 1:15.12 for the 1<MD+,%30,%55,%70>1/<MD-,%0,%55,%70>4-mile race.

“He came by the next day and apologized, told me he totally blew it,” Ellis said of Bejarano, embroiled in a tight battle with Joel Rosario for the Hollywood Park riding title. “And I don’t think anybody would dispute that, going (25.82) with a horse that’s capable of running 1:07 for six furlongs.”

Rail Trip has raced exclusively on synthetic tracks during his career, but there’s no doubt in Ellis’ mind that he’ll adapt to dirt, which is why he wanted to keep him home until about a month before the Breeders’ Cup.

“We’re only talking about the Midwest, we’re not talking about the East Coast,” Ellis said of the Breeders’ Cup. “I’m sure Churchill Downs is going to have some sort of prep before the Breeders’ Cup, usually about a month before.”

Now it’s up to Dutrow as to which path to take to the Classic.

“They tell me he’s a pretty good trainer, so I guess he’ll figure it out,” said Ellis, who’s never met Dutrow and has no idea if Rail Trip will ever return to the Southland.

“This kinda just caught me out of the blue,” he said.

Ellis has trained Rail Trip since the son of Jump Start hit the track at 2. Ellis has turned what was once a speed ball into a horse who can rate off the lead and save his best running for the stretch.

“That’s the kind of horse that, as a trainer, helps you get up early every day of the week,” Ellis said. “I mean, I invested three years of time into that horse. We’ve worked hard to get him to relax to the point he’s a push-button horse now.

“That was probably one of the problems (in the Gold Cup). When Rafael kind of throttled him down, (Rail Trip) didn’t fight him, he just throttled down. It’s taken us three years to get to that point.”

And Rail Trip is also to the point where, if healthy, he can run with any horse in the country. According to Ellis, it doesn’t matter if the race is on dirt or synthetic.

“He’s pretty much the type of horse that I think will run over anything,” he said.

But much to Ellis’ disappointment, he won’t be the one saddling Rail Trip if the horse makes it to the Breeders’ Cup.

“It’s going to be difficult to go to the barn every day,” he said. “It’s not going to be as hard to watch him run as it is to go to work every day and he’s not there.”

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